About stories of all kinds
Well, I'm back with a Tuesday (barely) book review after getting creative with my schedule for two weeks. I finished several books in the interval though, which I'm going to try and get reviews out for. First up, a book I began last October and have been intermittently slogging away at since: A Most Mysterious… Continue reading The Liar’s Recommendation: A Most Mysterious Case and Other Works
The pop culture image of Count Dracula, vampire poster-boy, ranges from creepy to campy, spooky to sparkly, demonic hell beast to hot monster boyfriend. Apparently, part of this is due to Bram Stoker’s family, or his “estate,” somehow losing the American rights to the story and characters way back in the early twentieth century. Everyone… Continue reading Stalking Us As We Sleep: Books Inspired by Dracula
It’s been a long, strange road with this series for me—well, that’s a bit melodramatic. It hasn’t been that long. It has been “wondrous strange” though.
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher MorleyMy rating: 4 of 5 starsI really loved this book on first read—the atmospheric bookshop, the eccentric proprietor, the silly love-story, and the espionage plot shoe-horned in throughout. What’s not to like? Recently when I was skimming through it in search of a quotation, I got caught on so many… Continue reading Judging Spies by Their Covers: The Haunted Bookshop Review
Reading this book just made me want to read the first one again... This is portal fantasy and fractured fairy tales and an original fantasy world and parallel universes and alternate history all rolled into one.
A dying motel with a custom built tower, a night-walking sister who is obsessed with Hitchcock, and a grandmother who tells stories of monsters combine to create a setting ripe for horrors of all kinds.
This book was just what I needed to pick me up from a series of reading disappointments. There haven’t been many new reads I’ve discovered that I really liked instantly and kept me interested and enjoying them all the way through.
Admittedly, I read this book during a lazy summer a couple of years ago. This is the review I wrote then, very short on specifics and very long on the adjectives. "Fantastical and atmospheric. The view through a child's eyes can be heartbreaking and poignantly identifiable."
The story is written in vignette style, but each vignette is still so tightly bound to the overarching plot that it isn’t purely vignette style, but something in-between vignette and novel. In my opinion, the result is that it fails to effectively be either.
The Big Sleep by Raymond ChandlerMy rating: 4 of 5 starsEver since I saw the murky, black-and-white film noir (a dizzying merry-go-round of murders and mayhem with a new character and a new accusation every five minutes that was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in a classic gumshoe and siren routine), I've been wanting to… Continue reading Don’t Sleep on Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep Book Review
Fictitiously Yours 